Trump’s ‘America First’ policy came as a shock to the South East Asian community. A staunch reversal on many Biden era policies made regional players question the reliability of the US as a long-term partner. More pressingly, the South East Asian countries were directly confronted with an ultimatum: either align with America or risk alienation. This proved itself as a direct challenge to the regional ASEAN association. More specifically, its preference for strategic hedging – a balancing of relations between China and the US. Ultimately, despite Trump’s assertive foreign policy, ASEAN countries sought to stand their ground and prevent full alignment. In turn, this begs the question: in what ways have Trump’s policies impacted ASEAN’s view of strategic hedging?
Defining the Regional Power Dynamics
To answer the question, the subject and its relevance must briefly be delineated. At the centre of this article rests ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) – an intergovernmental organization composed of Brunei Darussalam, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. It provides a forum for dialog, policy formulation, and economic cooperation between states in the Asia-Pacific region. With a total GDP of 3.6 trillion USD in 2022 and a central position in the world’s manufacturing and trade, [1] ASEAN is becoming a focal point for the tensions of the Sino-American balance of power. More specifically, the United States is trying to counter-balance China’s increasing trade ties with regional countries while also serving as a protector of international law in the South China Sea through its Freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs). More specifically, China has engaged in constructing military bases on artificial islands, sending fishing vessels into other countries’ economic zones, and engaging in aerial and naval standoffs with military and coast guard forces of the surrounding countries.
Nowadays, the ASEAN countries find themselves in the midst of a Sino-American struggle for power that envisions member countries as the frontier for this display of great power politics. Needless to say, they continue to refuse to play a definitive role in these clashes. Instead, its Community Vision 2045 asserts a ‘3rd way’ approach – ASEAN centrality. [2] In other words, ASEAN should be a neutral group of sovereign countries that drive the politics of the region as opposed to the great powers. Prominently, the US has been supportive of this policy, with Biden’s 2022 White Paper on the Asia-Pacific pursuing a model where “Indo-Pacific governments can make independent political choices free from coercion.” [3] Hence, Biden made the US a more attractive partner for regional players with its promise of guarding neutrality.
On the other hand, with Trump’s second term came a paradigm shift in trade policy, contradicting Asia’s experience of his first term as a more forthcoming partner. With an imposition of steep tariff rates, Trump’s economic policy was proposing an ultimatum. As explained by Singapore’s Minister of Defense Ng Eng Hen, the President’s policy meant the US “changed from liberator to great disruptor to a landlord seeking rent.” [4] Interestingly, the President’s demand for economic concessions in tariff reduction treaties proved counterproductive. They unified ASEAN to seek diverse international partnerships outside of the great power struggle. Thus, Trump’s policies made ASEAN look beyond China and the US to lessen the stakes of strategic hedging and solidify their position as neutral powers. In practice, they’ve done so in two key ways in order to achieve economic security.
ASEAN as an Economic Bloc
Firstly, under Trump’s second term, member states in ASEAN have started pooling power into the forum by building common intra-alliance partnerships and international commitments outside direct US involvement. More specifically through the already mentioned Community Vision 2045 ASEAN attempts to project itself as a “more globally competitive and seamlessly integrated single market and production centre.” [2] However it is important to note that the agenda was passed at the 46th Summit (still during the Biden administration) with its implementation gaining steam at the 47th Summit during Trump’s term. Thus, this vision may ultimately represent a set of transcendent goals as opposed to direct responses to the incumbent President’s trade policy.
Despite this, it is plausible that Trump’s term is regarded far more skeptically than that of his predecessor Joe Biden. On one hand, Biden worked to maintain a strong presence at ASEAN summits, including hosting an ASEAN-like forum in Washington during which Biden maintained the US as a guarantor of a neutral Asia-Pacific. [5] On the other hand, the sidelining of Trump from intra-alliance and international trade agreement negotiations at the 47th summit may underscore ASEAN’s declining trust in the current administration’s economic policies that force it to choose sides in the Sino-American balance of power. [6] At a closer glance, the Association enhanced its internal free trade agreement, created a new Digital Economy Framework Agreement and signed a mutual Mineral Development Vision. [7] In a wider scope this demonstrates how Trump’s ‘America First’ market policy may decrease US presence in intra-ASEAN economic consolidation efforts and hence solidify its ‘blockification.’ Nonetheless, it is unlikely Trump’s second term economic policies are a direct causal driver of ASEAN’s economic pooling efforts.
Diversification over Alignment
Leveraging this newly gained position as an economic unit, ASEAN is seeking to diversify their economic cooperation in order to lessen their dependence on China and the US. This choice is in part driven by Trump’s unpredictable economic policy that could leave the region overly vulnerable to political and fiscal instability radiating from the US market. More specifically, at the Association’s 47th summit, member states expressed their concern that Trump’s goal of “push[ing] [the] region to take a bigger role in US supply chains,” [8] would undermine the Alliance’s strategic hedging prerogative. Thus, during the same summit, the alliance developed efforts to bolster ties with states outside the Sino-American axis through ASEAN+1 conferences with significant regional trade partners. In doing so, they significantly expanded existing free trade agreements with Japan, Korea, India, Australia, New Zealand, [9] and even China. [10] All this on the sidelines of the summit and away from direct US oversight.
Crucially, the summit also produced an ASEAN-India Comprehensive Strategic Partnership that envisions increasing cooperation on virtually all sectors of the economy and politics between 2026-2030. [11] This is significant as it demonstrates the bloc’s willingness to acknowledge India as a regional partner in a bid to curb the weight of the Sino-American power struggle. While it could be argued that this is an ongoing long term goal, Trump’s increasing economic demands served as a substantial accelerator. Thus, Trump’s coercive economic policy diminished the US economic position in the ASEAN market as member states abandoned hedging altogether in favor of diversification away from the Sino-American center.
State-Centered Defense Policy
However, unlike in the Alliance’s common approach to the economic sector, ASEAN countries manage their defense policy individually. In practice, this means that there is a wide variation between the interpretation and extent of strategic hedging in this domain. To guide a more focused analysis, it is useful to examine the four players in ASEAN whose defense policy needs to respond to direct territorial and maritime infringements from China. Brunei, Vietnam, Philippines, and Malaysia all have a coastline reaching into the South China Sea. Under international law, each state has the right to an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) stretching 200 nautical miles from their cost. This ensures the state’s control over resource extraction, fishing, shipping, and trade. However, China threatens this order by military and coast guard standoffs, island occupations, island building, and commercial violations of the EEZs.
The case of defense policy is far more asymmetrical than the one of ASEAN’s economic policies. Whereas in economics, hedging implies the balancing of China and the US who are both strong viable trade partners. In the domain of defense, China is the coercive power with territorial and maritime ambitions whereas the US aims for non-territorial strategic goals. Hence, the surrounding countries are barred from relying on Chinese security guarantees by the virtue of China already infringing on their sovereign territorial integrity. Nonetheless, this does not make the idea of strategic hedging unfeasible. Instead, actors may still stray away from US security guarantees in fear of Chinese trade retaliation or hesitance about long-term US military presence on their territory.
In this domain, Trump’s policy proved to be an amicable continuation of security guarantees already extended by Biden and Obama. And perhaps contrary to intuition, Trump’s coercive economic policy did not spill over to hurt defense partnerships. Thus, it will be argued that while Trump’s policy did not outright alter the individual countries’ view of strategic hedging, but solidified their already diverse positions.
State by State
In order to further understand the extent of the President’s impact on regional defense policies it is imperative to analyse the positions of respective members state by state. Here, member countries differ vastly in the extent of their significance towards the regional security paradigm. However, as mentioned previously Brunei, Vietnam, Philippines, and Malaysia represent the most significant forces in Sino-American relations as they experience direct Chinese encroachments into their EEZs and even territorial waters. Likewise, Singapore, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Thailand are, to a lesser degree, also impacted by the aforementioned disputes. Nonetheless, this analysis will focus on the former series of actors because they have been at the focal point of Trump’s talks at the 47th summit.
The increasing polarization of the Sino-American balance of power, perpetuated by Trump’s trade war with China, made Malaysia sway outside of its traditional hedging and towards the US. In its Defense White Paper of 2020, Malaysia claimed that the US-China power struggle “entered into a new phase where bilateral relations [were] marked more by rivalry than accommodation.” [12] Here, Malaysia was responding to the president’s first term policy of a trade war with China. [13] However, it was only during the more radical imposition of 100% tariffs on China during Trump’s second term that Malaysia conceded to a defence cooperation agreement on 31 October 2025. [14] While its contents are limited to “training, exchange of expertise, and capacity-building in maritime security and defence,” the agreement underlines Malaysia’s subtle shift towards the US. In turn, it can be argued that the intensification of Trump’s trade pressure on China during his second term showed Malaysia that the President was now projecting a more binary policy: either with or against the US. Hence, Malaysia chose to pledge a significant defense partnership to the US in hopes it will keep avenues for future cooperation open and will be able to maintain Malaysia’s economic hedging strategy.
On the same note, while Brunei Darussalam does not keep a clear defense policy position in the Sino-American Balance of power, [15] it has been shifting towards the United States through the annual Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) program. [16] However, this still places Brunei well within the margin of strategic hedging with no prospect of swaying to one side or another during Trump’s second term.
On the other hand, Vietnam maintains the Four NOs Policy: “no partaking in military alliances, no siding with one country to act against another, no foreign military bases in the Vietnamese territory or using Vietnam as leverage to counteract other countries, and no using force or threatening to use force in international relations.” [17] This largely stems from a dichotomous dilemma. On one hand, Vietnam’s EEZ is consistently violated by China but it is unsupportable to allow US armed presence because of the memory of the Vietnam War. Hence, Vietnam sits in a position that naturally dictates strict strategic hedging. Despite calls from Trump’s administration for closer ties, Vietnam becomes adamant, even prolonging its ongoing talks on US arms purchases. [18]
In sharp contrast, the Philippines, owing to their status as a former US colony gravitated extensively towards the US. This is paradoxical as the Philippines have to balance strategic hedging in the area of economics but maintain a strong anti-Chinese defense policy. Here, Trump has only built on existing pro-US policies such as the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty [19] and Enhanced Defense and Cooperation Agreement (from Obama’s administration) [20] with the unveiling of “Task Force Phillipines.” [21] By extension, Trump’s second term thus far only added to the Philippine’s ongoing defense policy against China. He did not cause a re-consideration of strategic hedging as a viable strategy.
Towards Accelerated ‘blockification’?
So far, Trump’s second term economic ultimatums are encouraging ASEAN to accelerate its efforts to lessen their dependence on China and the US so that strategic hedging does not pose an existential threat to their economic sectors. They continue by diversifying trade relations and accelerating ‘blockification’ into a unified economic unit. On the contrary, his policies continue to have little impact on ASEAN’s vision of strategic hedging as a path forward in the Asia-Pacific when responding to Sino-American contentions. Nonetheless, the unpredictability of signals coming from the Oval Office leaves Asian countries both uncertain and uneasy about what Donald Trump is yet to divulge in the remainder of his second term.
Trump’s renegade departure from US’s long-term openness to trade currently does not indicate a diminution of US standing as a regional security partner. Nonetheless, ASEAN is likely to look to an internal defensive alliance or one with India as a rising regional power in order to diversify their cooperation. Ultimately, Trump’s policies raise the question: does ASEAN’s strategic hedging have a place in the new South East Asian paradigm?
Reviewed by Martin Machorek and Veronika Zwiefelhofer Čáslavová
Cover photo: Donald Trump at the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, 2025. (Source: The White House)
References
[1] (2024) The Structure of ASEAN Economy. Asean Statistical Brief, Volume 4. https://www.aseanstats.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/00.-ASEAN-Statistical-Brief-on-GDP_19Jan2024.pdf
[2] (16 May 2025) ASEAN COMMUNITY VISION 2045. ASEAN. https://asean.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/05.-ASEAN-Community-Vision-2045_adopted.pdf
[3] (February 2022) INDO-PACIFIC STRATEGY OF THE UNITED STATES. The White House. https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/U.S.-Indo-Pacific-Strategy.pdf
[4] Ho, Selina et al. (2025) A Second Trump Term: Will Southeast Asia Tilt Toward China? Carnegie Endowment. https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2025/04/a-second-trump-term-will-southeast-asia-tilt-toward-china?lang=en
[5] Stromseth, Jonathan. “Taking stock of US-ASEAN relations as Biden convenes a special summit.“ Brookings, 11 May 2022. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/taking-stock-of-u-s-asean-relations-as-biden-convenes-a-special-summit
[6] Chai, James. “ASEAN knows what Trump wants, but did it give away too much?” CNA, 30 October 2025. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/asean-summit-malaysia-anwar-personality-driven-approach-donald-trump-5432551
[7] (October 2025) Overview of 47th ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Affairscloud. https://affairscloud.com/overview-of-47th-asean-summit-in-kuala-lumpur-malaysia/
[8] Zaw, Aung (2025) Trump Hails ‘Peace and Prosperity’ in ASEAN, but Myanmar Remains Forgotten. The Irrawady. https://www.irrawaddy.com/opinion/commentary/trump-hails-peace-and-prosperity-in-asean-but-myanmar-remains-forgotten.html
[9] Findlay, Christopher et al. (2011) ASEAN +1 FTAS and Global Value Chains in East Asia. EIRA. https://www.eria.org/research/asean-1-ftas-and-global-value-chains-in-east-asia
[10] Ng, Eileen and David Rising. China pitches itself as alternative to US protectionism after signing expanded ASEAN free trade pact. AP. https://apnews.com/article/asean-china-free-trade-trump-8a9d0f1ed5e87ebba4b5798275cd3605
[11] Plan of Action to Implement the ASEAN-India Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (2026-2030). ASEAN. https://asean.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Final-POA-to-Implement-ASEAN-India-CSP-2026-2030.pdf
[12] (2020) DEFENCE WHITE PAPER. Malaysia Ministry of Defense. https://www.mod.gov.my/images/mindef/article/kertas_putih/KPP2.pdf
[13] Taddonio, Patrice (2024) As Trump Vows Larger China Tariffs, How Did His Trade War Play Out the First Time Around? pbs.org. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/donald-trump-china-tariffs-trade-war-xi-jinping-video/
[14] (2025) New Malaysia-US Defence Accord Deepens Military Cooperation and Regional Security Architecture. Defense Security Asia. https://defencesecurityasia.com/en/malaysia-us-defence-mou-indo-pacific-security-south-china-sea/
[15] (2021) DEFENCE WHITE PAPER 2021. MINISTRY OF DEFENCE OF BRUNEI DARUSSALAM. https://www.mindef.gov.bn/Defence%20White%20Paper/DWP%202021.pdf
[16] (2024) U.S. Relations With Brunei. U.S. Department of State. https://2021-2025.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-brunei/
[17] Minh, Hai (2023) Prime Minister reassures Viet Nam’s „four nos“ defense policy. SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIET NAM Government News. https://en.baochinhphu.vn/prime-minister-reassures-viet-nams-four-nos-defense-policy-11123080610460922.htm
[18] Guarascio, Francesco and Phuong Nguyen (2025) Pentagon chief urges closer ties with Vietnam amid prolonged arms supply talks. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/pentagon-chief-visits-vietnam-amid-prolonged-arms-supply-talks-2025-11-02/
[19] US-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty. Signed at Washington, on 30 August 1951. https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%20177/volume-177-I-2315-English.pdf
[20] Galang, Mico A (2024) A Decade On: EDCA and the Philippines–US Alliance. rusi.org. https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/decade-edca-and-philippines-us-alliance
[21] (2025) US & Philippines Unveil Task Force to Counter China in South China Sea. APT. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4rK7DVzt3o
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